Thursday, June 30, 2011

All around us, a continuous erosion of our standards and norms for living is clearly underway. Nothing can stop it, though unpredictable events will occasionally make things chaotically worse. Day by day the sea nibbles away the foundation of the oceanfront home, until it is swept away by a sudden violent storm.

Tom Baugh's recent essays on the liberty movement are brilliant, provocative and poignant. I talk about two of them in this episode, The Least You Can Do and Fourth Generation Rhinocerous Warfare. In them, he properly chastizes the liberty community for flaws that could prove fatal in the struggles to come. In the current "Gandhi phase" of our movement, we need to mentally prepare to do things in the future that mere dabblers and academics would abhor.

In terms of what's coming, although the timing of "the collapse" is impossible to predict, it is possible to chart a variety of trends likely to impact us economically and socially.

Time again to face the likely facts, and get ready for the trials ahead. Things will get a lot worse before they get better, but our founding principles (before the Hamiltonian corruption, if you please) will again be the prize.

And with the Independence Day holiday approaching, remember: "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

And they will not let facts intrude on this cozy mindset that, "We're all in this together." If the truth were admitted, that collectivism inevitably leads to state-sponsored violence against individuals to confiscate their property, the network of lies that prop up collectivism would be exposed for what it is.

Along comes CNN with a program that explains how innovation works in our "modern age". It's not the result of someone coming up with a better mousetrap, pleasing his fellow man by improving his life, exchanging his valuable innovation for money or other things HE values, voluntarily. No, it's the result of a sophisticated partnership between government and industry, because in today's world, the "cost of entry" is too high, or the cost of "changing the infrastructure" is prohibitive, etc., etc.

CNN's program cited two examples to "prove" this "new model" for innovation in America: GPS and the Internet. Both examples are bogus.

Both GPS and the Internet were originally MILITARY programs, designed by and for the exclusive use of the military. In the case of GPS, it never became useful in the civilian world until after the military expenditures for the satellites and ground stations had been deployed, and the military decided not to turn on the "denial of accuracy" provision during peacetime. And absent a war with another superpower with enemies using our own GPS system for precision navigation, it will remain that way.

Innovation didn't come to GPS until it became clear to commercial industry that full GPS accuracy would be available to civilians. And then the market for GPS receivers exploded, driving the ongoing miniturization and other innovations.

The Internet began as Arpanet, the military's alternative survivable network for transmission of military orders during a national state of emergency, including a nuclear attack. Arpanet developed the original network protocol for the Internet, but the Internet as an innovation didn't take off until universities and then commercial companies began to replicate the network in a technical environment that resembled the Wild Wild West (back in the 1990s) more than the orderly, systematic, government-regulated "innovation" portrayed by CNN.

One more time: Governments don't innovate. They make decisions based on politics, not economics or science. Collectivists can't and don't innovate, they inhibit innovation.

Friday, June 10, 2011

In this episode I talk about starting a LASR--a Liberty and Self-Reliance group--in your town or neighborhood.

What's a LASR group? It's a group of people who live near you who share your concerns about the coming collapse, and share your desire to do something constructive to protect themselves and their families from the worst.

Why should you worry about your neighbors? Because each one of them who fails to prepare will suffer undue hardship, of course, but more selfishly, each unprepared one of them will become a burden to those around them, and could even become a threat. On the positive side, each one of them could be a valuable trading partner should hard times come.

How should you go about organizing a "Liberty and Self-Reliance" group? And why call it that, versus something like, "Survivalists of North Gulch"? How do you get started? How do you recruit members? What should you talk about in your first meeting--and what should you NOT talk about? And what is the big potential downside of starting a LASR?

If you are well into your preparations, I urge you to consider starting your own LASR. If you are able to help other families near you become much better prepared to face hard times, the hard times you end up facing could be lessened significantly.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

In this show, I talk about a "Shrug Out Property" that my wife and I recently acquired.

By "Shrug Out" I mean a piece of land we can develop and live on which will be productive for us, allowing us to live comfortably without needing conventional jobs, paying income taxes, and helping to prop up the Dependency Culture that we shruggers despise.

In this show I describe what our objectives were, what priorities we had for the property, how we went about finding the best place for our needs and means, and how we plan to develop it into a productive homestead. Your mileage may vary, but in covering how we approached our decisions, I think this show will help you gain valuable insights in making similar decisions to fit your own needs.

Oh, and by the way, that silly old thing called the U.S. Economy? The clock is ticking my friends. Keep plugging away at your preparations. ------------

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